New York|Will Trump Make New York Democrats the New Lords of Capitol Hill?

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Will Trump Make New York Democrats the New Lords of Capitol Hill?

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Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, shown in June with Senator Chuck Schumer, both New York Democrats, would head the powerful House Judiciary Committee if the Democrats retake the House next month.CreditCreditZach Gibson for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump may well be one of the few New York leaders liked by the heartland of America. Yet his growing unpopularity elsewhere may not only fuel a Democratic resurgence in November — it may be the very thing that propels more New Yorkers into power.

If the Democrats retake the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, New York would play a larger role in Washington than it has in a generation.

Representative Jerrold L. Nadler would head the powerful House Judiciary Committee, charged with investigations into Mr. Trump’s administration. Representative Eliot L. Engel would become chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Representative Nita M. Lowey would take the helm of the House Appropriations Committee — the first woman to do so.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who upset Representative Joseph Crowley in a Democratic House primary in June, is staking an early claim to becoming the leader of her party’s progressive movement next year.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries from Brooklyn is also angling for a role in the leadership slate, arguing that New York needs a voice in those ranks. (He could replace Mr. Crowley as the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, the fourth-ranking position in the party’s hierarchy.)

In the Senate, opposition to Mr. Trump is already being led by the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, who is Mr. Trump’s central legislative antinomy. Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, recently pledged $20 million to help Democratic Senate candidates, and is mulling his own run for the White House.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is a potential 2020 White House contender, as is Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

On the Republican side, another former New York mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, long ago abandoned his sobriquet of “America’s mayor” to direct legal strategy for the president and assist his New York-flecked administration.

“In terms of important politicians from New York, I don’t think you had any time like the present going back to F.D.R.,” said William T. Cunningham, who served as an adviser to both Mr. Bloomberg and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the fabled Democratic senator from New York.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is staking an early claim to becoming the leader of the Democratic party’s progressive movement.CreditDave Sanders for The New York Times

A muscular reach into the federal government does not, of course, guarantee good things for a state whose residents have been long bitter about its outsize financial contributions to the federal coffers.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal helped build New York City’s public housing and other works projects, but much of the money ended up being siphoned to other states. Nelson A. Rockefeller, as vice president, did not particularly favor New York after saddling the state with Moral Obligation bonds that exacerbated the fiscal crisis in the 1970s as governor.

Mr. Trump may have exceeded Mr. Rockefeller’s capacity to enrage New Yorkers when he signed off on ending state and local tax deductions that had been a boon for New Yorkers. Far from helping fund New York projects, he instead instructed Republicans to rip funds away from the massive Gateway rail tunnel project because he was mad at Mr. Schumer.

“New York’s problem is you have these great personalities, but those personalities can work against them in terms of what they can achieve and what they can deliver,” Mr. Cunningham said. “Trump won’t deliver for New York. Giuliani is not looking out for New York’s interests right now. Schumer and Trump are locked in battle institutionally, which limits the cooperation needed to get local projects.”

But others look to the golden years of Senator Moynihan and Senator Alfonse D’Amato, the Republican who served with him and who brought plenty of bacon to the grand griddle that is New York.

“We would be in a tremendous position to do more things for our great city,” Mr. Jeffries said. “If we were given the opportunities to govern, we could focus on transportation and infrastructure projects and fix our crumbling mass transit system. That would be a top Democratic priority.”

Further, Ms. Lowey, with the power of the purse strings, could work with the state’s delegation to help shore up that Gateway Project for the Northeast corridor, or the tortured Pennsylvania Station remodel, among other things.

Even Mr. Trump has suggested he could be game, saying last week that a House under Democratic control might not be all bad.

“Can we get along?” he said. “Maybe. There is a possibility they want infrastructure, I want infrastructure.”

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Representative Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, shown in July, could become the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, the fourth-ranking position in the party’s hierarchy.CreditAnthony Geathers for The New York Times

Some of these New Yorkers have circled one another for years. Mr. Nadler was an occasional but particularly lethal thorn in Mr. Trump’s side over the decades, interfering with the real estate developer’s wily moves.

Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump have had a relationship for years, a bond that strengthened over the last decade, as Mr. Trump played family counselor between Mr. Giuliani and his son, Andrew, from whom he was estranged after his divorce from his mother. (“He told them there are two sides to everything,” Mr. Giuliani said.)

The relationship greatly intensified with the former mayor’s early and unwavering support for Mr. Trump’s White House bid, when other national Republicans were far more circumspect. “We basically lived together for four months,” Mr. Giuliani said.

Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Giuliani have had almost no relationship save for two key moments: Mr. Giuliani’s endorsement of Mr. Bloomberg’s unlikely mayoral bid in 2001, which Mr. Bloomberg repaid not in upholding Mr. Giuliani’s policies, but by presiding over his wedding with Judith Nathan at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence in Manhattan. (Yes, Mr. Trump was in attendance. And yes, Ms. Nathan is divorcing Mr. Giuliani.)

Mr. Giuliani said he could live with Mr. Bloomberg as president. “As an executive he would be a good president,” he said. “I can’t see how I could ever endorse him because of some of the positions I think he would bring into the government, and a lot of his people who are very left-leaning. But would I be comfortable that he is qualified to be president? Sure.”

Mr. Schumer has had dealings with both former mayors, and helped Mr. Giuliani get what he needed from a federal crime bill. “He completely was my ally,” Mr. Giuliani said. “If it was something for New York City, it rarely was ideological.”

Mr. Nadler has a history of stepping on Mr. Trump’s New York dreams. In the mid 1980s, Mr. Trump began to take part in a large development project on an abandoned rail yard in Manhattan, which had significant community opposition.

He invited Mr. Nadler, then in the New York Assembly, to see his models of the proposed project, which were to include a massive skyscraper in which he would inhabit the notional 150th floor. “I thought he wanted to be the tallest man in the word,” Mr. Nadler remembered. “It was too grotesque.” Later as a congressman, Mr. Nadler helped sink his application for government mortgage insurance on $180 million of the project’s costs. (The skyscraper never made it into the final project.)

Mr. Nadler also helped stop Mr. Trump from getting federal funding to figure out how to dismantle an elevated highway on the West Side, which caused Mr. Trump to write Mr. Nadler a snarky note saying thanks for nothing, and later called him one of the three worst politicians in his book.

“I think Trump is a disaster,” Mr. Nadler said. “I am going to oppose him for all kinds of reasons for the things he wants to do. I don’t think our personal history has any bearing on it.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 31 of the New York edition with the headline: After Midterms, a Power Boost for New York Democrats?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe